I

In the Rech Year Book for 1912—that miniature
political encyclopaedia of liberalism—we find an article by Mr. Milyukov:
“Political Parties in the State Duma in the Past Five
Years”. Written by the acknowledged leader of the liberals, and an
outstanding historian at that, this article deserves our special attention,
all the more so since it deals with what may be termed the most
important pre-election subject. The political results of the activity
of the parties, the question of their role, scientific generalisations
regarding the alignment of social forces, the slogans of the forth coming
election campaign simply ask to be written about, and Mr. Milyukov
had to touch on all these points, once he had tackled the subject,
no matter how much he tried to confine himself to a plain relation of the
facts concerning the “external history” of the Duma.

The result is an interesting picture, illustrating the old, but ever
new, subject: how is Russian political life reflected in the mind of a
liberal?

“The party of people’s freedom,” writes Mr. Milyukov, “which in the
First Duma predominated numerically and in the Second Duma morally, was
represented in the Third Duma by only 56–53 deputies. After holding the
position of a leading majority it became an opposition party, retaining,
however, its dominant position in the ranks of the opposition, both
numerically and qualitatively and by the strict group discipline which
characterised the speeches and voting of its representatives.”

The leader of a party, writing about political parties, declares that
his party “retained ... its domination ... qualitatively”. Not bad—only
this self-advertisement might have been somewhat more subtle.... And, then,
is it true that the Cadets dominated in respect of strict group discipline?
This is not true, for we all remember the numerous speeches of
Mr. Maklakov, for example, who isolated him self from the Cadet group and
took up a position to the right of it. Mr. Milyukov made an incautious
statement:
for, while it is safe to advertise the “qualities” of one’s party,
because such an appraisal is entirely subjective, the facts at once refute
the advertisement of party discipline. It is characteristic that the Right
wing of the Cadets—both in the Duma, in the person of Maklakov, and in
the press, in the person of Messrs. Struve and Co. in Russkaya
Mysl—took their own line and, far from adhering to strict
discipline, they destroyed all discipline in the Cadet Party.

“To its left,” continues Mr. Milyukov, “the people’s freedom group
had only 14 Trudoviks and 15 Social-Democrats. The Trudovik group retained
but a shadow of the importance it had formerly had in the First and the
Second Dumas. The somewhat better organised Social-Democratic group came
out from time to time with sharp invectives regarding ‘class
contradictions’, but, in essence, it could not pursue any tactics other
than those also pursued by the ‘bourgeois’ opposition.”

This is all, literally all, that the distinguished historian has to say
about the parties to the left of the Cadets in the twenty pages of his
article. But the article is supposed to be devoted to an examination of the
political parties in the State Duma—it goes into the minutest details of
every shift in the ranks of the landowners, dealing at length with the
sundry “moderate-Right” or “Right-Octobrist groups” and with every step
taken by those groups. Why, then, are the Trudoviks and the
Social-Democrats practically ignored? For to describe them as Mr. Milyukov
does is tantamount to ignoring them.

The only possible answer is: because Mr. Milyukov has a particular
dislike for these parties, and even a plain statement of generally known
facts regarding these parties would run counter to the interests
of the liberals. In fact,
Mr. Milyukov is perfectly well aware of the reshuffling effected in the
composition of the electors which reduced the Trudoviks to “a shadow of
the former importance they had had” in the Dumas. This reshuffling, which
was effected by Mr. Kryzhanovsky and other heroes of June 3, 1907,
undermined the Cadet majority. But can this justify the ignoring and, even
worse, the distortion of data relating to the importance of parties having
very small representation in the landowners’ Duma? The Trudoviks are very
poorly represented in the Third Duma, but they have played a very great
role during these five years, for they represent millions of peasants. The
interests of the landowners especially demanded the reduction of peasant
representation. But, we should like to ask, what interests prompt the
liberals to brush aside the Trudoviks?

Or take Mr. Milyukov’s ill-tempered sally against the
Social-Democrats. Is it possible for him not to know that the “tactics”
of the latter are distinguished from that of the Cadets not only because
there is a, difference between a proletarian and a bourgeois opposition,
but also because democracy differs from liberalism? Of course, Mr. Milyukov
knows this perfectly well, and he could quote examples from the modern
history of all European countries to illustrate the difference between
democrats and liberals. The point is that when it concerns Russia the
Russian liberal refuses to see the distinction between himself and
the Russian democrats. It is to the advantage of the Russian
liberal to pose before the Russian readers as a representative of the whole
“democratic opposition” in general. But this advantage has nothing in
common with the truth.

Actually, it is common knowledge that the Social-Democrats in the Third
Duma pursued tactics absolutely different from those of the
bourgeois opposition in general and of the Cadet (liberal) opposition in
particular. It may be safely asserted that, had Mr. Milyukov tried to deal
with any one specific political issue, he would not have found a single
one on which the Social-Democrats did not pursue fundamentally
different tactics. Having chosen as his subject a survey of the
political parties in the Third Duma, Mr. Milyukov distorted the principal
and cardinal point: that there were three main groups of political parties,
which
pursued three different kinds of tactics—namely, the government parties
(from Purishkevich to Guchkov), the liberal parties (Cadets, Nationalists
and Progressists), and the democratic parties (the Trudoviks representing
bourgeois democracy, and working-class democrats). The first two
generalisations are clear to Mr. Milyukov, he sees perfectly well the
essence of the affinity between Purishkevich and Guchkov on the one hand,
and all the liberals on the other. But he does not see the distinction
between the latter and the democrats, because he will not see it.

II

This is repeated when he deals with the class basis of the
various parties. To the right of him Mr. Milyukov sees this basis and
reveals it; but he grows blind the moment he turns to the left. “The very
law of June 3,” he writes, “was dictated by the united nobility. It was
the Right wing of the Duma majority that undertook to defend the interests
of the nobility. To this the Left wing of the majority added the defence of
the interests of the big urban bourgeoisie”. How edifying, isn’t it? When
the Cadet looks to the right he draws distinct lines of “class
contradictions”: here the nobility, there the big bourgeoisie. But the
moment the liberal turns his glance to the left he puts the words “class
contradictions” in ironical quotation marks. The class distinctions
disappear: the liberals, in the capacity of a general “democratic
opposition”, are supposed to represent the peasants, the workers, and the
urban democrats!

No, gentlemen, this is not scientific history, nor is it serious
politics—it is cheap politics and self-advertisement.

The liberals represent neither the peasants nor the workers. They
merely represent a section of the bourgeoisie—urban, landowning, etc.

The history of the Third Duma is so generally known that even
Mr. Milyukov cannot help admitting that on frequent occasions the liberals
voted together with the Octobrists—not only against (the
government), but also in favour of certain positive
measures. These facts, in view of the common history of Octobrism and
Cadetism (which in 1904–05, up to October 17, 1905, were one),
prove to everyone to whom
historical reality means anything at all that the Octobrists and the Cadets
are the two flanks of one class, the two flanks of the bourgeois
Centre, which vacillates between the government and the
landowners, on the one hand, and democracy (the workers and the peasants),
on the other. Mr. Milyukov fails to draw this fundamental
conclusion from the history of “the political parties in the Third Duma”
only because it is not to his interest to do so.

In a new way and under new circumstances, the Third Duma has
confirmed the fundamental division of Russian political forces and
Russian political parties of which there were definite signs in the middle
of the nineteenth century, and which acquired a growingly distinct shape in
the period 1861–1904, rose to the surface and became fixed in the open
arena of the struggle of the masses in 1905–07, remaining unchanged in the
1908–12 period. Why is this division valid to this day? Because the
objective problems of Russia’s historical development—problems which have
always and everywhere, from France in 1789 to China in 1911, formed the
content of democratic change and democratic revolutions—have as yet not
been solved.

This is grounds for the inevitably stubborn resistance of the
“bureaucracy” and the landowners, as well as for the vacillations of the
bourgeoisie, for whom changes are essential but who are afraid that the
changes may be made use of by democracy in general and by the workers in
particular. In the sphere of Duma politics this fear was particularly
apparent among the Cadets in the First and the Second Dumas, and among the
Octobrists in the Third Duma, i.e., when those parties represented the
“leading” majority. Although the Cadets contend with the Octobrists, they
take the same stand on questions of principle and it is really more a
matter of rivalry than of a fight. They share with them a cosy place near
the government, alongside the landowners; hence the apparent
keenness of the conflict between the powers that be and the Cadets, their
closest rivals.

While ignoring the distinction between the democrats and the liberals,
Mr. Milyukov goes into extraordinary detail and examines at great length,
with gusto, one might say, the shifts in the ranks of the landowners:
Rights, moderate-Rights, Nationalists in general, independent Nationalists,
Right Octobrists, plain Octobrists, Left Octobrists. No serious
significance can be attached to the divisions and shifts within these
limits. At most they are connected with the substitution of a Tverdoonto
for an
Ugryum-Burcheyev[1] in an administrative post, with the change of
persons, with the victories of circles or coteries. In everything
essential, their political lines are absolutely identical.

“Two camps will contend [in the elections to the Fourth Duma]”,
insists Mr. Milyukov, in the same way as the entire Cadet press never tires
of insisting. That is not true, gentlemen. There are three
principal camps that are contending and will contend: the
government camp, the liberals, and working-class democracy as the centre
towards which all the forces of democracy in general gravitate. The
division into two camps is a trick of liberal politics, which,
unfortunately, does occasionally succeed in misleading some sup porters of
the working class. Only when it realises the inevitability of a division
into three main camps, will the working class be able actually to pursue,
not a liberal labour policy, but a policy of its own, taking
advantage of the conflicts between the first camp and the second, but
not allowing itself to be deceived, even for a moment by the sham
democratic phrases of the liberals. The workers must not allow themselves
to be deceived, nor must they allow the peasants, the mainstay of bourgeois
democracy, to be deceived. That is the conclusion to be drawn from
the history of the political parties in the Third Duma.

Notes

Tverdoonto—a retired administrator travelling abroad, from
the series of essays Abroad.

Ugryum-Burcheyev—a satirical portrait of a mayor, drawn by
Saltykov-Shchedrin in his History of a Town, who came to be
recognised as a typical example of reactionary, stupid and narrow-minded
officials.